Dear friends --
First, we hope you are finding, as we are, that the present troubled times do open new doors and opportunities. We are quite sanguine about our prospects for success, broadly defined to incorporate both achieving our policy goals and evolving our own consciousness and relationships.
We haven't sent a letter to this Activist Leader list since April 6, but we have kept up a steady drumbeat of communications to you via bulletins, press releases, briefings and testimony (virtual and in-person), and for those in Santa Fe area, advertisements, and a new billboard.
Still we have not kept you entirely up-to-date on our plans and activities, many of which you can join along with us, or otherwise help with. We hope you will. This letter will touch upon some of these local plans and actions, in no particular order. If you want to help please do. "Many hands, light work."
Items of more national interest, of which there are plenty, must wait until Bulletin 382, which is in the works.
1. Actions in Los Alamos
Some of us have started going to Los Alamos on what has turned out to be an irregular basis at first, for protest, discussions, meetings, and speaking at the County Council.
Based on our experience so far we now want to regularize this presence, aiming for those days -- typically alternate Tuesdays -- on which the County Council meets. On those days, we will protest ("witness" is the better term), meet to discuss issues at the public library, speak to the County Council, meet with others in Los Alamos as the opportunity arises, and on occasion hold press conferences, among other activities.
At our last public protest, we were spontaneously joined by a local Los Alamos activist for a while, and I for one was surprised by the number of drivers in passing vehicles who gave us positive feedback. There is some support in Los Alamos -- mostly hidden, but it's there, as we know from other sources as well.
We can supply signs.
There is no need to go into the details of our various public messages right now. In brief, we condemn what LANL is doing but not the people doing it (who are usually people of good will who are ignorant of policy issues).
We know of more potential paths of effective presence, based on the foundation of the actions described, if there were more people involved -- especially if folks opposing (more) nuclear weapons were interested in engaging in dialogue with people in the town and the lab.
On this coming Tuesday June 9, we will gather in the Hot Rocks Java Cafe (4200 W. Jemez Road) at 3:00 pm for nearby public protest, discussion -- and for those interested, public speaking at the County Council meeting (in the Municipal Building downtown) during comments from the floor at 6 pm.
Some very quick background:
As you may have read, NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams said (and Triad happily repeats) that “[t]he heart and soul of the nuclear enterprise is right here in Los Alamos.”
He's right about that, as far as warheads are concerned. Given the NNSA-wide priority on pit production -- NNSA's largest project by far -- it is not wrong to say that the "heart" is among other things early-time pit production, now LANL's signature program.
The proposed FY2027 budget for pit production modernization at LANL is fully 90% more than is being spent this year (i.e. $2.482 billion [B] in FY27 including the Plutonium Engineering Support building, vs. $1.305 B this year).
The "soul" meanwhile is the propaganda product of an origin myth woven around the noble heroes of the Manhattan Project. As a gaggle of Los Alamos schoolchildren sang at the opening of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, "We've a Gadget we must make / For the human race's sake."
Of considerable interest, Los Alamos County appears slated to receive tens of millions of dollars in FY27 alone from pit production via the County's share of gross receipt taxes. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The County hires lobbyists and sends its councilmembers to DC to lobby for pit production and other nuclear weapons programs.
2. Actions in Santa Fe
Some of us have been speaking about nuclear weapons issues in the "petitions from the floor" portion of City Council meetings as our respective schedules allow, sometimes driving from Taos and Albuquerque to do so. We have also submitted a discussion draft of a new City resolution to the Council and Mayor and will be following up with them ASAP. The draft resolution opposes all pit production at LANL as well as any the expansion of LANL activities in Santa Fe, prioritizes disposal of legacy transuranic waste, and calls on the congressional delegation to work to decrease nuclear weapons spending.
As many of you know, Senator Heinrich is promoting a new LANL "satellite campus" somewhere near but not in Los Alamos.
If you live nearby we hope you will attend the Santa Fe City Council meeting a week from today on June 10. Public comment for non-agenda items is usually held within a few minutes of 7 pm. Speakers are allotted 2 minutes. As in Los Alamos, there are other actions being planned in Santa Fe.
3. New billboard facing northbound I-25 traffic north of Albuquerque, publicizing the "Call for Sanity, Not Nuclear Production" registry of resistance
This is a "tri-blade" billboard (i.e. a time-share, with two other advertisers) in an excellent location, seen by all the traffic going north from Albuquerque and Rio Rancho toward Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and other points north. It went up on May 15 and will soon have nighttime illumination. It is clearly readable from hundreds of yards away. Look for it immediately past the Santa Ana Pueblo vineyard on the south side of the highway. This billboard is part of our "resistance rising" campaign to push back on accelerated nuclear weapons production regionally and nationally, to the best of our collective ability and financing.
(larger)
By the way, it seems billboards can leap across oceans in a single bound. Who knew? There is a point to this silly joke: resistance against the proposed "plutopian" future cuts through issue "stovepipes" and geographies.
As regards plutonium, a few of you may recall the 1985 BBC nuclear thriller "Edge of Darkness," once available on Netflix. Here's the "plutonium lunacy" scene, which given Trump's plan to give 20 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to private industry in the quest for "global energy dominance," and make as many pits as possible for "enhancing American nuclear dominance," suddenly seems not too outdated.
4. Please help recruit endorsers at StopTheBomb.org.
We have many, but we need more -- especially among organizations, religious communities, and businesses. This is a "simple" activity anyone can help with.
This "registry of resistance" is especially important given the continuing efforts of some Democrats in Congress and their NGO allies -- including some so-called "antinuclear" groups in New Mexico -- to drive all of the nation's pit production to Los Alamos, which as we are already seeing will greatly increase the scope and scale of pit production here. (Other groups hang back, afraid to speak truth to power -- in a way akin to the "weasel states" satirized by wildfire>_at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in 2014.)
5. 2026 Summer program
Our 2026 summer internship program is still evolving and we are still looking for participants to join Madison Figueroa and Ella Katz, with whose help we (Trish, Greg, and Dinah Vargas) will be putting together public activities, including the ones above. Madison is working part-time now; she will be joined by Ella mid-June.
Formally, we are kicking off the summer with a guided tour of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History on June 18. If you want to go you must RSVP; write Madison. We have some free passes. If you can pay your own way that will make our limited supply of those passes go farther.
Four of us will be heading to DC for a week of meetings on Capitol Hill on June 21.
Write Trish if you think you might want to work more intensively with us this summer.
6. All of this is costly. Please help if you can.
Right now, we largely rely on individual donations and word-of-mouth to fund all this. Please help if you can, and if you feel so moved, help guide others to us.
In solidarity (with those who actively oppose production of new nuclear weapons here and now),
Greg Mello
Permalink for this letter (posting may not be instant); prior activist letters.
